December 31, 2010

A BLOG REPORT: Ashley Smithwick And The Paring Knife. “The whole thing struck me as silly. There was no reason to call an emergency meeting to have a discussion in private, to issue a press release. I can’t think of how they could have been more irritating in how they did it short of actually getting rude. The Chairman and the Superintendent were politicians. Who knew that a pair of leaders of a little school board in a small county in rural North Carolina would come across like seasoned politicians? They refused to characterize the situation at all. . . . When the discussion arose about the Smithwicks providing a written release, the Superintendent said that he would not, in their place, give a release to the press, because he would not want the press to be rooting around in his child’s records. That struck me as an implied threat.”